Biden — His Time? Delaware Senator Joseph Biden has formally announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. He has for months had a website up to promote his candidacy, so this is no surprise. My friend Joe in Belleville (a suburb on the northern border of my city, Newark, NJ, that should be annexed to Newark) has been very favorably disposed to Biden's candidacy, and has directed my attention to Biden's website a number of times. I have been unable to share Joe's enthusiasm.
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(I once saw Biden in a clubcar on a train from Washington headed for New York. He was drinking a glass of milk(!) on his way home, and got off in Wilmington. He apparently commutes between DC and Delaware rather than residing in Washington. Is that a good use of his time? Perhaps he can unwind on the train, and do some reading away from the pressurecooker.)
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Biden's main claim to distinction from other Democratic candidates for President is his plan for a federal Iraq. Alas, this is nothing like a new idea. I advocated such an approach here February 1st, 2005, and in that post, cite a paper by the conservative Heritage Foundation to the same effect from March 7, 2003. That paper is still online.
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I summarized my stance thus:

At end, Iraq needs a government that is virtually identical to that of the United States. Why the U.S. pattern? Because the United States was originally 13 separate countries, each of which saw itself as different, in greater or lesser measure, from every other, and was suspicious of all the others and afraid of being overwhelmed. So during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, each state voiced its concerns and addressed ways of reassuring everyone that they would not be bullied by other states. This is the "Great Compromise of 1787" that the Heritage Foundation article above refers to, which is also called the "Connecticut Compromise". * * *
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So good luck to the people of Iraq in this brave new world. It is really not necessary to reinvent the wheel to ride into the future. The basic work was done in Philadelphia in 1787. You just have to write the plan down in Arabic — and Kurdish.
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Iraqis deserve what we have. Maybe they can get it by organizing themselves as we did.

To the extent other Democrats do not advocate federalism for Iraq, Biden should be credited with some sense in that area. But what else does he have to offer?
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PBS's NewsHour today mentioned that Joe Biden has been in Congress for 34 years. A Google search for "biden act", to find legislation that his name applies to, turned up one: the Helms-Biden Act of 1999, which authorized the U.S. to withhold contributions from the United Nations, including for peacekeeping, to force reform in that organization. That measure did achieve some results, but the U.S. still pays much too much for the UN, as compared to other countries.
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What else has Biden accomplished in 34 years? Heck if I know.
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Conservatives, however, hate him, and tried to embarrass him with a silly, stupid, ridiculous attack on comments he made about Barack Obama as quoted by The New York Observer:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

ABC News summarizes the firestorm of make-believe indignation from the racist scum of the Radical Right thus:

Immediately the conservative media establishment — Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, bloggers — publicly pounced. At Townhall.com, Mary Katherine Ham wrote: "A clean black man? The first black guy on the American political scene who can both shower regularly and speak properly? Is that really what Biden thinks? If a Republican had said this, we'd have a national outpouring of grief over the residual ignorance and racial insensitivity in our country, and the guy would be in sensitivity training until around about the time John Kerry is elected president."

The Observer's current issue says of Biden:

Although he admits to a tendency to "bloviate," he thinks that an aggressive advocate with rough edges might be just what the party needs right now. "Democrats nominated the perfect blow-dried candidates in 2000 and 2004," he said, "and they couldn’t connect."

So what did this man who praises aggressive plain speaking do? He apologized for his remarks about Obama! What a wuss.
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What he should have said is something like this:

Oh, shut the fuck up, you racist, bullshit-artist hypocrites. I don't want to hear your garbage. Nobody wants to hear your crap but the neo-Nazi, Confederate slime who are your fan base. Everybody knows that when you shout "prejudiced" at me and other Liberals, you are just a thief shouting "Thief!" to distract people from your own sins. Go fuck yourselves. I don't give a rat's ass what you say about anything. The decent, intelligent people of this country are tired of your idiocy and slanders, and the horrendous mess you have made of this country and its foreign policy. You can't embarrass me. You only embarrass yourselves.

Would Biden say anything like that? Of course not. He had a chance on Comedy Central's Daily Show tonite, whose audience would love to hear him tell the Radical Right to go fuck itself. But he wussed out yet again.
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Joseph Biden doesn't have the guts to attack the Radical Right even in a friendly venue. How can he win the Presidency and defend this country from foreign dangers if he doesn't even have the guts to attack the Enemy Within with words? He does not have The Right Stuff to be President.
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Have another glass of milk, Senator, and leave the Presidency to tuf guys.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,084 — for Israel.)




- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:39 PM